Chapter ten: Swallow

Serena took the stairs two at a time, then skidded to a halt on the landing. When Kitt had said lots of stairs…

A wide room of unadorned stone met her sight, but the stone needed no embellishment to make the sight overwhelming. Stairs and walkways lined the walls, the ceiling, the floor, at crazy and haphazard and constantly changing angles. After looking for just a few moments, Serena had to close her eyes, leaning against a wall as dizziness threatened to knock her feet from under her. Where was she standing? A wall? A ceiling? She didn't know any more. The floors and staircases ran every direction, sideways and backwards; the room was twisted in on itself like a pretzel.

She took a careful breath, then opened her eyes again, focusing on the floor directly in front of her. Two doors, had Kitt said? She started forward, then paused after she had passed an open archway. Did that count as a door? She tried to remember whether she had seen any doors in this place, but finally had to look up. Yes. There were doors. And curtains. But none of them were anywhere near her. So Kitt must have just meant openings… right?

Serena quickly returned her gaze to the junction between floor and wall. Past the archway she went, up one step, through a second passage that opened on her right. She raised her eyes once more—

—and gasped as she looked up and found herself in the same room as before. How was that possible? The door had led away from here…

A flight of steps ran up on her right, and another down to her left. She took the latter, then ducked through a curtain that hung across the first opening. Her stomach gave another sickening lurch as she realized that she was back in that insane room again, and this time she recognized the curtain she had gone through, a drape of ragged lavender that hung sideways above her, still swishing with the motion of her passage.

She clutched at the stone wall behind her, sliding slowly down so that she could rest her head on her knees as she waited for her stomach to stop roiling. This was worse, far worse, than anything else in the Labyrinth, even that sewage pipe… Her heart was racing. How could anyone, even a Goblin King, bear to live in such a place?

Serena swallowed, then returned to her earlier tactic of looking only at the floor before her, doing her best to ignore the sheer drop just beyond the edge that led to a door seemingly set in the floor with a flight of stairs running above it to a catwalk leading to an arched opening through which she could see the eternally continuing stairs…

She tore her gaze away, back to the floor. Stairs. She needed stairs going up. She looked carefully to her right and left. There were two sets going down. Where were the--?

She looked behind her, wondering if she'd come the wrong way and how she could possibly find the way back, and there were the stairs, where that doorway had been just a moment before. She shook her head and began climbing. Up. She would keep on going up—and pretending she knew which way up was…

She followed the stairs to a landing, then took the first path upward that she saw. There might have been more than one. She didn't know. She didn't care. It wasn't as though knowing would help her find her way here…

She stopped abruptly as a thick wooden door loomed into view. Her staircase halted abruptly at its foot; there was no other path. This must be it. She reached for the knob.

The room beyond was not what she expected. Plush carpet of a deep green covered nearly all of the stone floor in the circular room, and drapes of the same color adorned the tall window, on whose sill sat a little girl.

She was swathed from head to foot in folds of lace and silk, so that Serena was amazed when she turned at the sound of the door closing—she wouldn't have thought the girl could move at all. Her feet were clad in dainty white slippers covered in beads and embroidered flowers, and she had almost as much ribbon on her head as curly brown hair. The eyes she turned on Serena were first fearful, then puzzled. "You're not a goblin."

"No. Where is the Goblin King?" Serena asked. Kitt had said he would be here. If he wasn't, then he could be anywhere…

"He's gone to meet Jonathan, to try and stop him I think. He might have already done it. He left a long time ago…" The girl pointed to a clock hanging on the wall, and Serena gulped. Only half an hour remained.

"Well, why haven't you left?" she demanded, forgetting for a moment the dizzying room beyond the door.

The girl seemed perplexed that Serena even had to ask. "I can't."

"Who's to stop you?"

"Why… I'm supposed to wait here for Jonathan to rescue me. That's what ladies do in all the stories, isn't it?"

"'What ladies d—'" Serena spluttered. "If you don't move, the chances are good you'll end up a goblin. You saw them, didn't you?" The girl nodded slowly. "Do you want to look like that? Act like that?"

The girl shrugged. "But I won't. Jonathan will save me. That's what always happens in the stories."

"This isn't a story!" Serena cried in exasperation. She strode over to the window and yanked the girl to her feet. "Come on. We'll go to meet your cousin. That's not against your silly rules, is it?"

The question had been basted in sarcasm, but the child seemed not to have noticed. "Yes, it is! And don't you touch me," she added indignantly, jerking her arm out of Serena's grip. "You're just a filthy commoner in boy's clothes. You have no right."

Serena opened her mouth to argue, but gasped and made a dash for the curtains as the sound of boot heels on stone rang out from the other side of the door. She ducked behind the drapery, grateful that the curtains were so wastefully long as to hide her feet, just a few seconds before the door clicked open.

"Well, my dear, it seems you may be staying with me after all." Serena could just picture the smirk on the Goblin King's smug face. "Your cousin has, regrettably, been held up at the castle gates, and I don't think that he'll be here before the thirteen hours are through. But don't worry," –for the girl had begun to cry—"you'll feel right at home here before you know it. I've already brought you a welcome present. See?"

Serena bit her lip in growing frustration. Only one flimsy curtain separated her from the Goblin King, but there was nothing she could do to intervene, and she was quite aware of her own danger, as well. He would not be happy if he discovered her here, trespassing in his castle—and wearing his clothes no less, she realized with chagrin.

And what was this present he was offering to the girl? Serena silently begged her not to take it, whatever it was.

"An apple?" the girl questioned, managing to sound scathing despite her sniffles.

"Not an ordinary apple, Emeralda." He was moving closer now, and Serena stiffened as she felt him pass her hiding place, circling the child. "Go on—take a bite. You'll see."

There was a pause, and Serena's heart lifted as she picture the girl ignoring the offering before her—then sank again as she heard a crunch.

"Now," the Goblin King said, his voice no less kind or coaxing, "you want to sleep, don't you?"

"Yes," the girl answered dazedly. "I'd like that."

"The carpet is very soft, very comfortable; wouldn't it make a lovely bed?"

There was no answer except the rustle of lace as the girl lay down on the spot.

"Good night, my dear," the Goblin King said softly, and Serena wished she could see his face, for his tone was strangely unreadable. "This is my gift—your last human dreams will be sweet ones." Then came the swish of his cape over the carpet, the creak of the door, and a fading click of boots on stone.

Serena bounded from her hiding place and stared, aghast, at the girl curled up on the floor, still gripping a small, yellow appletightly in one hand. Then she went to the window.

The goblin city was spread out below her, the Labyrinth beyond. The city gates were off to the left, and the castle gates directly across from them, far below her. Goblins swarmed around the gates, calling threats and insults to one very small figure standing alone before the entrance. A blade glinted in his hand, slashing wildly, but he was pushed back by the dozens of enemies that surrounded him, and he seemed to be tiring.

Serena looked to the clock on the wall behind her, but it gave her no hope; only ten minutes remained. Even if the boy could fight his way through the army of goblins in his path, he would never be able to navigate the room of stairs in time to save his cousin.

Even if they had gone to meet the boy, twenty minutes ago when she had arrived here, it would have been too late. Serena had failed, failed miserably. By this time tomorrow, the Goblin King would have another loyal subject to serve him, and she had been unable to do a single thing to help the girl escape that fate.

Serena went to the door and pulled it open. The maze of staircases and walkways rose to meet her as she descended the stairs; she gulped and stayed near the wall, trying not to look at anything. How was she to get out?

Hot tears of rage slipped down her face. It wasn't fair. How could she have come all this way, to the very heart of the Goblin King's fortress, only to watch the boy defeated and to be lost herself in this dizzying madhouse?

She just kept following the stairs down, wiping at her face with her voluminous sleeve, until she discovered that she could not go down any farther. She stood at a corner of the huge room, with staircases leading upward on all sides of her. She looked up; the stairs continued above her, splitting and branching to cross the room and connect the dozens of doorways. And just emerging from one doorway…

Serena shrank back against the wall, putting a vaulted walkway between herself and the Goblin King, and peered carefully up at him. He seemed preoccupied, drifting down a staircase as though completely unaware of his surroundings. He turned aside through another door, and emerged again, walking sideways on the other side of the room. He was much lower, from Serena's point of view—much closer. She readjusted her position, but she doubted he would notice even if he stepped one her; his gaze was completely vacant.

She watched with a mixture of fascination and nausea as he came to the edge of a dead-end walkway—and kept going, turning in one stride so that he stood upside-down on what had formerly been the bottom side of his path. The reverse side of a staircase that he had led him upward before now took him down, to an archway that showed the beginnings of a spiral stair.

Serena waited, but he did not reappear; having decided it was safe, she slipped out of hiding and began climbing the first stairway she could find, her mind working furiously. Could she change her direction as he had done, or was there some trick to it that she hadn't seen? And how could anyone possibly become so familiar with such a place that they seemed not to notice its existence? She strode to the edge of a platform and looked down. There, there was a doorway beyond which she saw no more insanely twisted stairs; it was only a short drop…

She took a breath and strode boldly off the edge. A feeling of triumph overwhelmed her for an instant as the floor fell out from under her, and she was certain she had done it—

Then she bit back a scream as she continued downward, the open doorway rising to swallow her up. Her desperately flailing hands caught hold of the doorframe, and she clung for dear life.

Had she ever had a more idiotic idea? She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth. This was crazy.

A few experiments proved that she didn't have enough of a grip to pull herself up, and her sweaty fingers were starting to slip. Maybe she could drop down? She looked below her, and found herself looking at a wall, a hallway. A strip of worn carpet ran past her left side, the ceiling on her right, and directly below her hung a painting of a couple dancing in a ballroom…

Her gaze reoriented itself, her mind identified up and down, and she dropped with an 'Oof!' onto the thin old rug. She lay for a second, trying to get her breath back, then sat up with a groan.

"Never… never again…"